Amazon's new Prime service a big hit with consumers for Christmas

During its annual day-after-Christmas debriefing, Amazon announced that it has signed on 10 million new members to the $99 per year Prime service.

By Aaron Sims |
Dec 27, 2014

EBay's loss is online giant Amazon's gain as the company announced on Dec. 26 that this recent Christmas shopping season it signed up 10 million new members to its Prime service, which costs $99 a year. EBay discontinued their Now delivery service earlier this year.

CNET reported on Dec. 26 that Amazon's Prime's two-day shipping was likely the big draw for customers -- particularly last-minute shoppers -- but Amazon is also touting other Kindle perks such as e-book and video rentals, and even its one-hour delivery service, Amazon Now, which debuted last week in Manhattan, New York.

"We are working hard to make Prime even better and expanding the recently launched Prime Now to additional cities in 2015," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a press release, without mentioning specific cities. He added that Amazon customers ordered more than 10 times as many items with the company's same-day delivery over the same period in 2013.

CNET reported that almost 60 percent of Amazon customers shopped this season using a mobile device. And Cyber Monday once again was Amazon's peak mobile shopping day, as other consumer fan-favorites were large screen television's from Samsung and LG Electronics, and laptops from Asus, HP and Acer.

As for its customers' gift lists, Amazon said that its own Fire TV Stick, Fire HD 6 and Fire HD 7 were among the most wished-for items on the site this holiday season. Amazon Fire TV was the best-selling streaming media box, and the Fire TV Stick is now the fastest-selling Amazon device ever.

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